Angola’s coach called for African nations to cooperate to improve their football after a winless opening week for the continent at the World Cup.
Four of the five African teams lost their first games with only Tunisia registering a draw against lowly Saudi Arabia.
”We are very conscious of that but we’re improving,” said Angola coach Luis Oliveira Goncalves.
”We have a lot of difficulties but the African football officials must work together to improve African football. We should feel happy about what we’ve done so far. However we need to give a little bit more to improve our football.”
Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo are all making their World Cup debuts, while Tunisia are playing their fourth tournament but have not won a game since 1978.
Goncalves said that although they only had one point between them, the difference was not huge between African teams and the rest of the world.
”Despite the fact that we haven’t won any matches so far and only Tunisia drew, the matches are very tough and balanced,” he said.
”There’s no big difference between the winner and the loser.”
Three of the opening defeats were by just a goal with Ghana losing 2-0 to Italy.
Angola lost 1-0 to Portugal and Côte d’Ivoire and Togo went down 2-1 to Argentina and South Korea respectively.
However Goncalves said he was hoping for an improvement, with football high on the agenda for African governments after more pressing needs like health and education.
”Unfortunately in our continent we have other priorities like health, education and development which are consuming our budget,” he said.
”But African officials are well aware of the quality of football in Africa and we hope we will be better in the near future.”
Pele’s famous prediction that an African team would win the World Cup by the turn of the last century has been shown to be well wide of the mark.
Despite possessing talented players, African sides have had little impact although Nigeria and Cameroon have both won Olympic gold medals.
Togo showed signs of serious internal strife last week when coach Otto Pfister briefly walked out on the team over a pay dispute.
African teams are under the spotlight here with South Africa set to host the next World Cup in 2010.
Angola will hope to improve the continent’s statistics when they face Group D leaders Mexico in Friday’s late match. – Sapa-AFP